Cold Case: New technology gives Jane Doe from 1990 a face

NEWARK – In 24 years, several homicides in Licking County have remained unsolved. One of those cases involves an unidentified woman who has been known only as Jane Doe since she was found.

Jane Doe’s body was discovered around 8 a.m. on April 19, 1990, outside the Pilot Oil station near the Interstate 70 and Ohio 37 interchange. She was wearing only a white pair of underwear.

Licking County Coroner’s Office Investigator Mickey Lymon said the autopsy revealed the woman was likely between 25 and 40 years old and had given birth at some point in her life to at least one child.

Jane Doe’s body was dumped at the Pilot station within approximately 12 hours of being found. The area where the body was found had been cleaned around 8 p.m. the previous day.

Retired Licking County Coroner Dr. Robert Raker went to the Pilot station in 1990, and 24 years later, he still remembers the scene.

“It was a decent day weather-wise,” he said. “She was behind the truck stop paved area in the grass lying on her left side.”

The autopsy found Jane Doe died as a result of blunt force trauma after being hit in the back of the head.

In 1990, a sketch was made of what Jane Doe looked like from photos taken during her autopsy. Since that time, technology has advanced to create a digitally enhanced version of the autopsy photos that gives a clearer picture of how Jane Doe looked at the time of her death.

The digitally enhanced image was created by forensic artist Catyana Skory of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. Lymon met Skory at a conference and said Skory agreed to do the sketch at no cost.

Jane Doe was about 5-feet-2-inches tall and weighed 110 pounds at the time of her death. She had a small white mole on the right side of the bridge of her nose and a small brown mole on her right cheek. She had brown eyes and reddish brown hair.

Technology also has advanced to allow DNA to be extracted from tissue blocks collected during the autopsy in 1990, Lymon said. That DNA could be tested against potential family members of Jane Doe to determine her identity.

“That’s why we’re so sure we can identify her,” Lymon said.

Raker said officials are closer now than in 1990 to identifying Jane Doe. He hopes someday the identification will be able to be made.

“We’d love to be able to be complete and thorough in our reports,” he said. “We like to tie things up in a neat bundle.”

Male DNA was found on the victim’s underwear and a profile is available if there is ever a suspect to match against.

Licking County Sheriff’s Office Detective Capt. Dave Starling said the case remains open but is considered a cold case. However, in the last year, police have tracked two possible leads.

Starling said he traveled to Iowa last summer because of a partial hit on the male DNA. After a second DNA test, the results were ruled not to be a match.

A family in South Carolina had Jane Doe’s DNA tested to be a possible match for their missing mother last year. No match was found through those tests, either.

Both the male and female DNA samples have been entered into CODIS, a national law enforcement DNA database.

Starling said it is possible Jane Doe was a prostitute and her murder could be related to several suspected serial killers believed to be targeting prostitutes near interstates across the country in the early 1990s. So far, though, no link has been formally made.

“It certainly has the consistency of a prostitute that left home and doesn’t contact her family and travels about,” he said. “That was the belief at the time.”

Because Jane Doe likely died 12 to 24 hours before her body was discovered, Starling said the place where her murder occurred could be 600 miles in any direction.

Multiple tips were called in to police from truck drivers around the time of Jane Doe’s death, but none of them panned out.

Jane Doe’s information also has been included in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database.

Anyone with information about Jane Doe’s death or identity is asked to call the Licking County Sheriff’s Office at 740-670-5500 or the Licking County Coroner’s Office at 740-349-3633.